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Infor Helps Hospitality Companies Measure Social Sentiment

(Marketwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwire) -- 12/06/12 --
Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, today announced the availability of social sentiment measurement capabilities within the Infor Hospitality Management System dashboard. Built through a new strategic collaboration with TrustYou, a market leader in online reputation management for the hospitality industry, hoteliers now have the tools to integrate TrustYou's data into Infor's existing Hospitality suite via a series of dashboard-embedded widgets -- providing real-time access to social sentiment that will aid staff in improving guest satisfaction to encourage more bookings.

Through this added data, strengths and weaknesses can be identified in real-time so that hoteliers have the ability to rectify guest concerns more rapidly. Specifically, these three new widgets -- Seal (TrustScore), Source and Review -- powered by semantic data from TrustYou, look through millions of opinions from more than 200 different sources in 23 different languages on review and booking sites, blogs, forums, and communities and streamline them into a straightforward, digestible summary for properties to address as they see fit.

The Seal Widget displays a hotel's overall TrustScore, an independent score that represents aggregated online opinions of hospitality consumers around the world. The Sources Widget gives staff an overview of numerous review websites where the hotel is represented so properties can better manage their online reputation by filtering reviews in a wide variety of ways -- source, data, sentiment, category, etc., to better understand where customers are writing reviews and manage the hotel's reputation across each source. Finally, the Review Widget displays current reviews of a hotel. Hoteliers can take instant action to remedy poor reviews or issues through a task management feature that prioritizes them to enable more timely responses to the most critical matters.

"Reviews are extremely valuable, and TrustYou's solutions, embedded into Infor's HMS application, will enable hoteliers to listen, understand and respond to guests, and proactively fix any complaints or criticisms," said Ben Jost, CEO and co-founder of TrustYou. "We are excited about this partnership and the opportunity to support Infor in powering a new offering that will help customers grow their online reputation -- which we believe will ultimately improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, drive marketing efforts and enhance customer service."
As online communities continue to grow, it's more important than ever for hoteliers to really grasp what's being said about them in public forums. Now, management can quickly engage guests when a positive or negative review is written, directly from the Infor dashboard, within a single click. Also, upon check-out, staff can encourage guests to provide feedback on their experience, which will roll up into the overall TrustScore and amount of reviews, making the property more marketable for future bookings.

"To many hoteliers, the idea of aggregating social media feeds and encapsulating guest sentiment about their properties seems daunting, but the business environment we live in requires these hotels -- independent or chain -- to take notice of what guests are saying about them in order to sustain business and build an emotional connection to the brand," said Stewart Applbaum, senior vice president and general manager, Hospitality, Infor. "We're innovating our Hospitality offering to enable our customers to gain instant access to guest sentiments and stay ahead of the curve with real time responses through various channels, and this new social offering will be game-changing for not only our customers, but the industry in general."
About TrustYouSince 2008, TrustYou is setting the standard for reputation with solutions for businesses to analyze reviews, tweets and posts across the social web, to gather trusted reviews directly from their customers, and to use the authentic conversations to successfully market their reputation online. TrustYou offers free online customer satisfaction surveys and SaaS analytics dashboards that capture sentiment and opinions from millions of comments from sources like Tripadvisor, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Yelp, etc. across 23 different languages. TrustYou already has more than 10,000 customers and partners in 60 countries among them companies like Accor, Marriott, Starwood, Hard Rock Cafes, Best Western Hotels, Holidaycheck, Micros-Fidelio and many others. TrustYou's headquarters are in Munich, Germany and Dallas, USA with further representatives in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Central Europe, Asia and Australia. To learn more about TrustYou, visit www.trustyou.com.

About InforInfor is the third-largest provider of enterprise applications and services, helping 70,000 customers in 194 countries improve operations, drive growth, and quickly adapt to changes in business demands. Infor offers deep industry-specific applications and suites, engineered for speed, using ground-breaking technology that delivers a rich user experience, and flexible deployment options that give customers a choice to run their businesses in the cloud, on-premises, or both. To learn more about Infor, please visit www.infor.com.

This announcement reflects the direction Infor may take with regard to the specific products and services described herein, all of which is subject to change by Infor in its sole discretion, with or without notice to you. This announcement is not a commitment to you in any way and you should not rely on this announcement or any of its content in making any decision. Infor is not committing to develop or deliver any specified enhancement, upgrade, product, service or functionality, even if such is described herein. This document, in whole or in part, may not be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Infor or its subsidiaries or affiliates. This announcement, in whole or in part, may not be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Infor or its subsidiaries or affiliates. Infor expressly disclaims any liability with respect to this announcement. The services described herein may not be available for all Infor products.